Products

Sometime around 2014 I purchased (2) products. A new Trek Mountain Bike and a Pebble Smartwatch. At the time Pebble was the first Smartwatch of its kind. When I purchased my mountain bike being able to switch songs, see who’s calling, reading a text message was almost impossible with either looking at my wrist or taking my phone out of my pocket. Also another key feature of the smartwatch was I could track speed, miles and time while riding.

I first tried to just attach the watch to the handle bars which failed, then I tried to prop something so it would hold the watch in place. I went on Amazon and figured someone had to have already created this product and sure enough there was a bunch. I ordered several different brands. The best one and cheapest solutions was the Suunto Bike Mount.

Everything worked perfect it sat on the handle bars nicely. It was easy to remove and attach the Smartwatch. Around 2014 I think the Pebble was the first Smartwatch, it’s now 2017 and there are a ton of great options available for smart watches with even more features. Hopefully this post helps you with what I wanted to achieve in 2014.

So I recently picked up a 2016 Nissan Pathfinder 2016 SV model. One of the features it had was Bluetooth advertised; so I figured Ok it has Bluetooth media streaming capabilities built in. I was upgrading the wife’s car from a 2013 Nissan Sentra which had it no problem. After we got the car and hooked up Bluetooth I noticed it only had Bluetooth calling capabilities. I Googled my issue and noticed several other people with the same problem.

I guess you need to purchase the higher end upgraded model or the Platinum edition which is about $15,000 more for the feature. After I did some research I saw the car had on-board AUX / composite hookup’s as well as a USB port.

HIGHFINE USB Bluetooth Wireless Audio

2 x RCA Male, 1 x 3.5mm Stereo Female, Y-Cable 6-Inch

So this was the first method I tried because I figured it would be the easiest. However the Bluetooth adapter just plain sucked it took about 3-4 minutes to connect the phone and was so inconsistent. Also I noticed I would have to type the RCA hookup because when it moved the audio would fade in an out. So I ditched that idea and check out my Method 2 below.

Method 2: This is actually what’s pictured in the posts image. It’s a little messy but I didn’t clean or zip tie anything up i just wanted you to see the initial setup. This setup also does not require the USB port however it requires you to use your Cigarette lighter for power. My wife likes to charge her phone in the car so I figured I would buy a Splitter so it would control both.

Kinivo BTC450 Bluetooth Hands-Free

NOCO GC020 12V 2-Way Splitter

2 x RCA Male, 1 x 3.5mm Stereo Female, Y-Cable 6-Inch

So this method worked the best and surprisingly it worked better than I expected it to. My Smartphone instantly connected to the Kinivo BTC450 Bluetooth Hands-Free device every time without any delays. What’s cool if you have both your phone connected to your Cars “Bluetooth Calling” and the Kinivo device it will pause your music and allow you to answer the phone call (this was a must). What kinda sucks is that you cannot use the steering wheel controls to control the Next/Previous playback. However on the Kinivo device were ever you decide to mount it has controls for Next-Previous-Stop-Play.

Setting Up Your Smartphone to Auto Stream

My next step was I wanted my device to immediately start playing Spotify when the Bluetooth connection was present.

Then you want to choose the Bluetooth device in this case mine was the BTC450 then I had it Auto Play spotify. You can choose whichever media service you are using from Google Play Music, Spotify, etc. There are several other applications that will accomplish this from: Trigger Task Launcher, Autoplay for Spotify I’m still testing to see which application works the best and works all the time. If you have any questions, tips or comments post below.

About a year ago I purchased my first 75 gallon fresh water fish tank. I started with a simple over the top dual filter that did great but I was sick of changing the filter pads every month. I also wanted something more powerful that would make my tank clear. I looked at several different options from Marineland to Fluval and a few other brands. Based on product reviews and pricing I decided to go with the Marineland canister 360 filter. This was my first filter so I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. The only knowledge I had was following YouTube installations and various forums.

When I received the Marineland canister 360 the instructions were a little vague. The biggest thing that got me was they included (2) small grommets that I would of thought they went on both input/output hoses at the base off the canister filter. Turns out that was totally wrong. I put them on there and primed and turned on the filter; I noticed water was leaking out of one the hoses at the base. I saw the grommet was stuck inside the hose which was causing the leak so the only way I could get it out was to take the hose completely off.

When I did this it made a suction and tons of water just started shooting out everywhere but I finally managed to get the hose reattached. Once I got the hose back on everything was perfect besides a lot of water that came out from a problem that could of been avoided with better instructions. Other than that the priming of the filter and everything else was a breeze! You can barely hear the filter running, the 4 valve air pump I have is honestly louder than the filter.

I was super nervous this month to clean the filter just to see how much it has collected due to the whole mishap with the water shooting all over. Honestly all I did was unplug the filter, turn the “key” and the hoses were turned off. There wasn’t a drop of water anywhere. I’ve been extremely happy with my purchase and the tank just looks great every since I installed this.